Increasing College Graduation Rates: What Works?

ABSTRACT This article reports the findings of a study that examined five institutions that are outliers in terms of having higher‐than‐predicted graduation rates based on their student profiles and institutional resources. Notably, these institutions have accomplished this in the context of having limited or no endowments and far fewer financial resources than their more selective counterparts. Motivated to gain an understanding of how the five schools managed to succeed at a task that has proven elusive for so many other colleges and universities, we conducted in‐depth case studies of the institutions in our sample. The data we collected indicate that rather than employing a one‐size‐fits‐all approach, the five schools demonstrated deep institutional commitment to college completion for their students, an ability to be resilient to setbacks and ambidexterity in managing the polarities of organisational life.